Technology: making our lives easier one gray hair at a time.

Here are yesterdays Twitter and Facebook posts, explained. This all started because… well, a month or two ago I won an eBay bid on a mold for a mug with an old-fashioned turn-of-the-century man in a bowler with a mustache (the man has the mustache, not the bowler). But the mold was shattered during transit. Last week I found another mold on eBay, bid on it, and yesterday morning I won it! Time to pay! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Pro tip: if your new computer comes with a fingerprint swiper, don’t get tricked into using it to get into any account ever, if you ever want to be able to access it again. Somehow it will think it mailed you a key fob with a number on it, and THE KEY FOB IS A LIE. So much for paying for that mustache mug mold I just won on eBay. FUCK.
What time today can I start drinking? (10 AM)

My new computer has a fingerprint swiper. At the same time that I find that kind of cool, I find it kind of frightening. Nothing says “robots take over the world” like something that you volunteer to sign yourself up for that may result in a computer not believing who you are. However, I do a lot of business online and an extra security step – especially one that doesn’t mean I have to remember YET ANOTHER PASSWORD – appeals to me. The pop-up box basically implied that instead of typing in a password I’d just have to swipe my finger over this little cube on my laptop. Well that sounds easy. HAHAHAHAH.

If I had a hairy nutsack, TODAY COULD SUCK IT. (9:45 AM)

I noticed the day I signed up for the thing that it wasn’t going to work with PayPal. All of a sudden when logging into PayPal it was asking me for the six-digit key from the fob they sent me. Except that they hadn’t sent me a fob, I’d scanned my fingerprint. Oh, no, it insisted. We sent you a fob. With a random number generator and you press it and then type in the number. Go ahead! Type in the number! HAHAHAHAHA.

I noticed they had a button for “this fob has been lost” so I clicked the shit out of that and told them it was lost and to let me on by answering security questions and telling it what my bank account number was. Well this sucks more than remembering a password! Let’s turn this feature off. So, I did. Fuck that fingerprint swiper!

Well…. then I tried to log onto eBay. And for some reason, I guess because eBay and PayPal are sleeping together, eBay wouldn’t let me log on unless I had the six-digit code from my (non-existent) PayPal key fob. And there was no way to get into my account to turn that setting off – it wouldn’t let me in the account without it. I navigated the website and found that I could report the fob as lost, and request a temporary code that I could use to get into my account. Someone would call me on the phone number associated with the account, either immediately or within one minute. Is this the phone number associated with the account? Oh, look, no, it’s not — for some reason they have my work phone number FROM WHEN I WORKED AT THE ENGINEERING COMPANY SIX YEARS AGO. I can change that number, of course… once I get into my account. Which I can do with the key code they’re about to phone me with. At the Engineering company.

Oh, look! Click this button for live help! HAHAHAHAHA. “Live chat is not available at this time. Live chat is only available Monday through Friday, 5 AM- 10 PM Pacific time!” But… but… (I look at the clock)… but that’s right now! Brain! Freezing! Up!

I navigate their FAQs and HELP section, which was filled with useful information like how to retrieve one’s password, and how great security is. Nothing about how to actually fix MY problem. So I decide to brave the phone.

Did you know they have different phone numbers for different help topics? True story! I had to figure out on the web site which of the questions they listed were most like the problem I was having (HINT: NONE OF THEM) and choose one phone number. Where a disembodied voice will ask you a lot of questions that aren’t related to the problem I was having, and tell you things like how to retrieve your password and how great security is.

Wow, #eBay, that’s awesome! I have never been through an automated voice mail system before that has LITERALLY reduced me to tears! Thanks! (10:30 AM)

TRUE STORY. By the time I got an actual live person on the phone on eBay, I had been navigating their system for about twenty minutes and was reduced to tears. I still can’t believe that. They automated phone system was so impossible, so frustrating, such a dead end, that it made me cry. That is FANTASTIC, eBay! STAY CLASSY! (Oh my god, this is how the robots are going to win, isn’t it?!?!?) After I finally got a person, it became even more of a comedy of errors. “Can I have the phone number associated with the account?” … “Well, no, you can’t, because it would only show me three numbers of the phone number it was going to try to call and I swear it looked like the number of the place I quit working six years ago. This is that number, if it helps.” … “Nope, that’s not the number associated with the account. Can I have the phone number associated with the account? How about your account ID number?” … “Well, I can’t FUCKING GET INTO MY FUCKING ACCOUNT TO TELL YOU THE FUCKING ACCOUNT NUMBER FUCKITY FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK! COCKSUCKER!” …. and this went on for about another 20-30 minutes. He was finally able to figure out that it was a PayPal problem, not an eBay problem, and here’s the number for PayPal, good luck! HAHAHAHAHAHA

My runaround with PayPal took about the same amount of time, but was mildly less frustrating (in that the automated phone service at least didn’t make me cry, because after all the “have you lost your password” questions it finally said “you can say AGENT at any time to get an AGENT” and I was all “AGENT MOTHERFUCKER! AAAAAGEEEEEEENT!!!a;dfkja;dksjads;lkjfasd;lkj”

Guess what the agent finally told me? Well, the third agent, because they kept passing me around. He told me it was an eBay problem! HAHAHAHAH! Go ask your mom! Go ask your dad! HAHAHAHAH ::sob:: Oh, and did I mention? At this point I had been on the phone for so long that the battery in my handset ran out. Fortunately I have the old Hanks phones, so there are two other handsets. BUT STILL. Nobody should be on the phone that long. I HATE THE PHONE.

ANYWAY. He swore he was going to transfer me, I guess because eBay was just on the other side of the bed, and sure enough, he got me through to some person who took about ten minutes to go over my story YET AGAIN and was all, “huh, that’s weird, let me turn that setting off.”

I swear I have more gray hair than I had two hours ago. (11:00 AM)

AND THEN I WAS ABLE TO PAY FOR MY MUSTACHE MUG. Y’all better buy the shit outta this mug when I get it made.

Because two hours on hold and being bounced back and forth between eBay and PayPal weren’t frustrating enough, now I’m going to go to the Verizon store and see what they can do about my broken cell phone! HUZZAH! DO I KNOW HOW TO HAVE A GREAT DAY OR WHAT. (11:15 AM)

Here’s the other problem. My phone got knocked off from a pretty good height over the weekend and did not appreciate the sudden stop of the floor. There’s no physical damage, but there is a little pixellated shape of Australia with black lines running off it, the width of the screen, and those black lines have been getting darker since the drop. This isn’t the end of the world but it is frustrating in that it does cover about a third of the screen. So I wanted to see what Verizon could do for me (HAHAHAHAHAH) because I’m almost at the point where my plan is due for a phone upgrade. I looked around online but decided I wanted to go to the store in person so they could take a look at the damage and tell me if they thought it was going to get worse, and if so, what could we do about it.

What a long day. (1:00 PM)

You know, I’m not even going to type this out — I’m just going to copy and paste what I eventually wrote to Verizon in an email.

Today I was treated rather condescendingly in a Verizon store; my phone had fallen from a pretty good height over the weekend and while not cracked, has damaged the screen in that black lines are starting to appear (and thicken/get darker as time passes) on the bottom third of the screen. The store seemed unconcerned and just told me to come back on 9/17, when an upgrade to my plan is available. I didn’t feel I was asking for special treatment, or to get anything for free; I just wanted acknowledgement of the problem and to find out if there’s any way that Verizon and I could work together to make something happen. The phone is still working, so far, in that the problem only seems to be visual and not impairing the function of the phone – but how do I know this isn’t going to get worse? The person at the desk seemed more into talking to someone else who had just walked in that he had apparently not seen in a while, than in looking at my phone. I got a little snarky about the situation on Twitter, where someone from Verizon support was kind enough to, unlike at the store, treat me online like a human being and said they would look into my problem.

Yes. I was in the store for about two minutes. The Dude behind the counter seemed more concerned with carrying on his bromance with his co-workers than with checking out the damage on my phone, at which he barely glanced.

It’s a sad day when the most helpful people you deal with are from the angry ghetto post office. (1:30)

At my bad-tempered, ghetto post office, where everyone is always moody and the line can turn violent in a heartbeat… at this post office, someone who had been out for surgery gave me the biggest smile and told me how glad she was to see me, and genuinely asked how my day was going. GO FIGURE.

Watch them be completely sold out of cold beer. (1:45 PM)

At this point, fuck this fucking day, I’m going to Publix for comfort food and beer.

Really? I really just stopped at the store TO GET BEER and FORGOT TO GET BEER? Ugh. At least I got donuts. (2 PM)

Indeed. I got to the front and the guy asked if I’d found everything I was looking for. They keep fruity beers in two different places in Publix, and I didn’t see Mike’s Hard Lemonade in the section by the vegetables so I meant to check over by the beer. GUESS WHAT I FORGOT. I almost burst into tears again. Fortunately they held my place and let me run go get it, but… sigh. Really?

So, Verizon! If you can’t help me with my broken phone until 9/17, does that mean I can stop paying you until then? #NotHelpful (2:30 PM)

I decided I was still a little bitchy about the store experience, so I complained about it on Twitter…. and within minutes had someone willing to help me.

I am getting better service from Verizon online after complaining about them on Twitter than I did by standing in front of an actual douchebag – er, I mean, freshly hired college student – at the store, in person. GO FIGURE. (5 PM)

It turns out they really couldn’t do anything other than offer me the ability to buy a pre-owned phone for five weeks, but at least this person listened to me, acknowledged that I had a problem, and apologized for my treatment in-store.

And that was my day yesterday. It’s only 8:30 in the morning but I already want to have another beer just after reading that! Gah.